Smartphones ate my life

Damien Murphy

We take them to bed, we take them to dinner, we take them to the lavatory, we take them to a concert and, instead of watching the performers, we video them.

They make us anxious. They endanger safety; even though illegal we use them when driving, and footpaths are gauntlets of screen-riveted zombies. They also fry brains. We've lost our children to the device, they've turned into automatons, forever lost to parental influence.

Can't live with them, can't live without them, but there is no escape - smartphones have become our obsession.

Now comes the backlash.

Fairfax Media received a large response to a story on Monday about a new video out of the US, entitled I Forgot My Phone, which parodies people's obsession with the small screen at the expense of those around them. The video, showing how social events have become anti-social, raises the question: when is it appropriate to pull out your phone? And, more to the point, when isn't it?

It also exposed a new etiquette evolving around the use of mobiles.

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Surprisingly, a sharp division is developing concerning private and public politeness of mobile usage. Perhaps contrary to many experiences, people are acutely aware of mobile diplomacy.

Herald readers this week were asked to choose if they were for or against several scenarios involving the use of their phones.

While most thought it was rude to text after sex but OK to make a call from the lavatory, family and friends were sacrosanct with most respondents saying the dinner table and school concerts were off limits for mobile engagement.

Here are some of the questions and responses:

Is it OK to check texts during dinner with a friend? Yes: 1688 , No: 6672.

Is it more acceptable to check your phone at a table full of friends? Yes: 2663, No: 5007.

If you're having a casual coffee with a friend, can your phone be included? Yes: 28987, No: 4353.

Is phone use when dining at home acceptable? Yes: 635, No: 6752.

If a phone rings in a restaurant, can you answer it? Yes: 1892, No: 5124.

When watching TV with the family, can you also check the small screen? Yes: 5464, No: 1494.

Is surreptitious phone work allowed at a school concert? Yes: 959, No: 5648.

Is it acceptable to have an eye on your phone during a business meeting? Yes: 1513, No: 4986.

When the mobile rings, can you ask the person on your fixed line to wait? Yes: 1077, No: 5237.

Is it OK to text or talk while on the loo? Yes: 4331, No: 2010.

If a couple are reading together in bed, can they text as well? Yes: 4184, No: 1977.

Can you text after sex? Yes: 747, No: 5095.

April 3, 1973 was when the world shifted. That day a Motorola engineer, Martin Cooper, walked out onto Sixth Avenue in New York, phoned a rival at Bell and foreshadowed Little River Band's question: ''Can you guess where I'm calling from?'' He was rubbing it in. So from the start, the mobile was used as a blunt instrument.

The first hand-held mobiles arrived in Australia in 1987. Back then, mobile was a misnomer as the device required a big battery. In the years ahead, the world went supersize but the mobile was one of the few pieces of pop culture that grew smaller. This year, some 900 million smartphones are expected to be sold - along with roughly the same number of more basic feature phones.

The idea of using a phone outside the home, office or phone box was so novel that there were no rules of etiquette handed out with the newfangled machines.

Even as late as 2007, the Institute for Global Ethics came up with a draft cellphone user's code of ethics that, six years later, seems well-intentioned, but quaint.

It included limiting audible conversation to short and concise moments, moving to a private place to make or take a call, turning ringers off at events or meetings, refusing to discuss private matters when others can hear, not using the phone while driving, and not interrupting conversations with friends or co-workers to take a call.

Today, smartphones seem to be turning men, women and children into their own separate islands. But there is hope.

On Friday, the YouTube version of I Forgot My Phone had been watched more than 20 million times. It begins with a couple in bed. The woman, played by the director, Charlene deGuzman, watches mute as her boyfriend checks his smartphone. The two-minute video follows her through a day of being ignored by phone-obsessed people at a cafe, a party, a nightclub, a bowling alley. At day's end, she returns to her bed where her boyfriend is still on his mobile.

''I came up with the idea for the video when I started to realise how ridiculous we are all being, myself included, when I was at a concert and people around me were recording the show with their phones, not actually watching the concert,'' deGuzman said in an interview published in the New York Times. ''It makes me sad that there are moments in our lives where we're not present because we're looking at a phone.''